


The Folly of One's Youth

by chaletian



Category: Chalet School - Brent-Dyer, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Holography, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-26
Updated: 2010-05-26
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:46:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaletian/pseuds/chaletian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Janeway finds a long-forgotten holodeck programme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Folly of One's Youth

Kathryn Janeway had fallen in love with Jack Maynard when she was eleven years old. He was tall, blond, and handsome, with an enormous sense of fun. He had cheerfully helped her play pranks on her friends, and she, in turn, had adored him. Admittedly, he was too old for her (at the moment, anyway) but time, Kathryn knew, would solve that problem soon enough. She made excuses to spend as much time in his company as possible, and even, on one occasion, faked a broken leg in an attempt to get in the San. Her plan had backfired, however, and she had been left in the tender clutches of Matey, who had shown very little sympathy for the young girl.

Her heart had been broken, quite suddenly, when she saw Jack talking to Joey Bettany, an Old Girl of the school. Joey was good enough fun, though Kathryn found her a little bossy, and her dignity had been sorely offended by being called a ‘good kid’, as Joey had done. But that morning, loitering in the corridor the better to catch a glimpse of her idol, Kathryn had seen Jack take Joey’s hand, and smile at her, and bend his head to murmur a few words in her ear. In that moment, with a sudden intuition, Kathryn had known that her love was unrequited. She had never seen Jack Maynard again.

oOo

Captain Janeway was miffed. She had just discovered that she was out of coffee, and though her immortal soul tempted her to abuse her position and exceed her replicator rations for the month, she held firm, and was thus reduced to what passed for coffee in the mess. She had headed for the bridge, only to be informed by a surprised-looking Ensign Kim that she was off-duty for the morning. Cursing herself for not checking the duty roster more carefully, an action that would have resulted in considerably more time in bed, Janeway had returned to her quarters and was now trying to find a way to pass the time.

She spent the best part of an hour tidying up, and then, in desperation, resorted tidying all the places that couldn’t be seen and were thus usually ignored. In due course, she started investigating under her bed. She discovered a uniform top that she had thought lost on an alien planet, two padds, and a small box. Pulling it out, Janeway looked at it, confused. Where had that come from? Then she remembered – her mother had given the box to her on the day Janeway had left on her first – and so far, only – mission on Voyager. Mrs Janeway had been clearing out the attic, she had said, and found the box. It was full of Kathryn’s games and books from her childhood, and so Mrs Janeway had decided it might as well clutter up her daughter’s life as her own. With subsequent events, Janeway had shoved the box under her bed and forgotten about it.

Suddenly feeling teary at the thought of her mother, so far away, Janeway opened the box. It was full of the ephemera of childhood – a few books, a doll that had seen better days, three old-fashioned exercise books filled with scribblings and an old padd that had served as a diary. There were hair ribbons, a pin from her first school dance and an old pair of sunglasses. In the bottom, tucked under an old paper flyer advertising the Jefferson Elementary School’s annual play, was a program disk. There was no label identifying the disk – it could have been anything. Janeway racked her brains, but couldn’t think what it might contain. Then she remembered – it was a holodisk. Thirty years ago, when holodecks were still a novelty, programs would be stored on these disks and then inserted into municipal holodecks. Sitting back on her heels, Janeway held up the disk.

“Now, what are you?” she asked.

oOo

Outside the doors of Holodeck 2, Janeway turned to her companion.

“I can't guarantee what this is going to be,” she said with a grin. “You could be in danger of entering a teenage girl's favourite Heathcliff romance!” Chakotay returned the smile.

“I'm sure I can handle it,” he replied. “Shall we, Captain?” With an incline of her head, Janeway stepped forward, and addressed the computer.

“Open programme Janeway-oh-one-seven,” she said, then glanced at Chakotay. “Are you ready, Commander?”

“Always,” he said. “Open doors.” The holodeck doors swooshed open, and Captain and Commander entered, not a little trepidatiously. They found themselves on a lushly grassed plateau, with bountiful profusions of colourful wildflowers. Behind them soared majestic craggy mountains with heavy snow visible above the treeline. In the bottom of the valley glistened a sapphire jewel of a lake, with buildings clustered around the shoreline at several points.

“This is beautiful,” murmured Chakotay appreciatively, breathing in the alpine air. “No Heathcliff fantasy here!”

“I'd forgotten this,” said Janeway, turning in a circle to inspect her surroundings. Her tone was almost surprised. “I loved this programme when I was a girl.”

“What is it?” asked Chakotay, as he gestured towards a narrow path. “Shall we?” Janeway started down the path, then stopped. She cast a rueful glance at their uniforms.

“We're hardly suitably dressed for the 1930s,” she said. “Let's go back, and I'll tell you about it.”

oOo

Walking back towards the holodecks twenty minutes later, Janeway explained the programme to her second in command. “It was one of a series of children’s holodeck programmes from classical fiction from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,” she said. “This one was based on a series of books about the Chalet School, set in Austria in the 1920s and 30s. I used to play in it all the time when I was a girl, but I stopped when I was about eleven or so – I can’t remember why now.”

“What’s the set-up?” asked Chakotay, as they reached the holodeck doors and stepped through. Janeway shrugged, a mischievous look in her eyes as she glanced up at him.

“We-e-ell,” she drawled, “when I last came here, I was a pupil at the girls’ boarding school down there,” and she pointed towards the lake, “but I’m not sure if you’ll pass!” Chakotay raised an eyebrow, and she laughed. “I’ll check the settings,” she promised, but a call for controls resulted in nothing. Both Janeway and Chakotay adopted the look well-known to all Federation personnel as the crap-the-holodecks-have-taken-over-the-ship look, only for Janeway to suddenly slap a hand to her forehead. “Of course! I forgot! There aren’t any controls for this – you just… well, see where it takes you. Come on!” She set off down the path and Chakotay, still not quite recovered from the fear that mountain goats may at any moment attempt to take control of Voyager, followed her.

They had not progressed far when they found themselves face to face with a group of school girls, all clad in brown gymslips with cream blouses and crimson ties. They were led by a rather stern-looking lady in a smart tweed suit, with chestnut hair swept neatly up under her hat. Towards the back was another adult, though this one appeared little older than the girls, and was certainly not so smart in appearance, as her hair was leaning perilously to one side, and she had managed to rip her skirt.

“Gruss Gott,” said the woman at the front, inclining her head politely.

“Gruss Gott,” replied Janeway, the salutation familiar on her lips. She felt a pang of loss for her childhood – how long had she played in this programme? She recognised the teacher now – Miss Wilson, fearsomely sarcastic, especially with young Kathryn, the new girl who had thought herself a regular know-it-all at Science, but whose knowledge was so far in advance of her teacher’s as to make it useless. And the girl at the back was Joey Bettany, with her perennial untidiness. Glancing through the ranks of the schoolgirls, Janeway thought she recognised some of them, even now: red hair and a saintly expression had to be Elizabeth… Elizabeth… Arnold? Arnett? Something like that. And if Elizabeth was there, then… yep, there was Betty. Small and dark, her expression was lively and curious at the moment, but Janeway knew very well how quickly that could change. At Miss Wilson’s elbow was Biddy O’Ryan, the most absurdly Irish girl Janeway had ever met, real or imaginary. It was odd to see them, really; odd to see them looking so young, though hardly surprising, for they couldn’t be more than thirteen or so. But to Kathryn Janeway, who had just managed to scrape into the Lower Second, hampered by knowing no other language than her own, they had been vastly more senior. Now here they were, just little girls.

She and Chakotay stood to one side as the girls passed with their escorts, and they were about to continue down the little path, when a shout could be heard, and everyone turned, looking for its source. Along a separate path that ran the other way along the plateau, a man came running. He was dressed casually in the wide-legged trousers of the period, shirt and a sleeveless jumper. Janeway smiled, unable to help herself, as she recognised the idol of her youth.

“And there,” she murmured to Chakotay, “you see the love of my childhood. Dr Jack Maynard – certainly the most dashing doctor I have ever known.”

“Don’t let our Doctor hear you say that,” replied Chakotay with a smile, watching the newcomer. Janeway returned the smile absently as she took in her first true love’s appearance.

He was young. Far younger than she had imagined. Thinking about it earlier that day, she had supposed him to be in his thirties or forties, but Jack Maynard was younger than that. Younger than Janeway herself, younger than Chakotay. Probably younger even than Tom Paris. He was still attractive, if not handsome: tall, well-built, with fair hair and blue eyes. He exchanged playful greetings with Miss Wilson and the girls, but Janeway could see how all his attention was focused on Joey Bettany, who did not seem to notice. Just for a moment, she felt an echo of the stabbing in the heart she had experienced as a child, the horrible dreadful certainty that Jack was not ever going to fall in love with her, and the unpleasant humiliation of realising it was, after all, just a story, and she was being inutterably stupid.

The school party moved on, and it took Chakotay’s hand on her arm, for Janeway to return to reality – or as much reality as one can summon in the midst of a holodeck programme.

“Are you all right?” he asked, dark eyes concerned, and Janeway smiled at him.

“Merely reliving the folly of my youth,” she said drily, then led the way down to the path to show him the lake.

oOo

Janeway never shared the Chalet School holodeck programme with the rest of the crew. It was too childish, she told herself, too detached from anything any of them knew to be enjoyable. School girls and shepherds, cups of hot milk and snowball fights, hockey matches and summer rambles – it went beyond fantasy. But really she just couldn’t stand the thought of anyone walking over her childhood.

THE END


End file.
